Category : Databases and related files
Archive   : ORGCHART.ZIP
Filename : README

This is a program that reads in an organization file containing the titles and
names of people or objects. The output from this program is a file and
optionally a printer output that contains the titles and names enclosed by
boxes and connected by lines that depict the relationship among the people or
objects in the organization.

Hardware requirement is IBM or compatible PCs with 192K memory and optionally
a printer (e.g. the IBM Proprinter) that can print out line and box characters.
Software requirement is DOS 2.1 or higher.

Besides business and government organizations, this program can also be used to
describe the relationship in other family trees and directories that can be
represented by tree structures.

The input file to this program should have a file extension of .ORG. The
output file produced by this program has a file extension of .ASC. Each record
in the input ORG file contains

(blanks)(title segment 1),(title segment 2),....,(title segment n),(name)

Where the blanks, title segments, and name, are all optional. The number of
blanks at the beginning of each record determines the relative level of the name
in the organization. If a record contains title segments but no name (e.g. a
vacant position), then the record should end with the separator, e.g. the comma,
to indicate the absense of a name.

The following demonstrates the contents of a typical organization chart.

Vice President, Manufacturing, & Development, X. Y. Smith
Director,Manufacturing,E. F. Brown
Manager,Tools,A. B. Hamilton
Manager,Parts,J. K. Maxwell
Director,Development,L. M. Riley
Manager,Research,M. N. Green
Manager,Education,Y. Z. Yates

Note how the levels in the organization are indicated by the number of leading
blank characters and the long titles are split by commas to reduce the size of
the boxes in the output chart.

Since the output of this program is a standard text file, it can be browsed or
edited by other text editors, or be sent to a printer, or be used as input to
other programs that accept text file for input.

If the organization chart is not too big, the program will print it out on a
single sheet of paper. If the organization chart is very big, the program
will print it on several pages so that you can paste them together later.

Make sure that the printer uses a monospaced font. A proportional spaced font
will cause misalignment of boxes and characters of the output chart.

This program can process very big organization chart, limited only by the PC's
64K byte data segment restriction.

The size of the output organization chart depends on how many levels of the
organzation that you want to processs, the length of the longest title segment
or name to be processed, the number of title segments in each name, and whether
you want to have boxes for the lowest level members of the organization.

The title in each record of the .ORG file should be split at appropriate points
by commas (or other separators like / or - if you indicate that choice in the
Setup option of the ORG program) in order to produce title segments of
reasonable lengths. The dimension of the boxes in the output organization
chart is based on the longest title segment or name in the input file. Every
time you run this program, the program will display a message telling you the
longest string that it has encountered. This message can help you determine if
there are any titles that should be segmented or if there are any names that
should be abbreviated. For example, using VP instead of Vice President, and
using people's initials instead of full names can reduce a big organization
chart to a manageable size.

Asking the program not to draw boxes for the lowest level of the organization
chart can also help reduce the output size significantly.

There is a file called ORG.PRO that comes with this program. It contains the
profile data used by this program to determine what characters to use for the
title separator and box and line drawings. It also contains the printer
information so that the program can drive your printer correctly. Each line
in the profile file contains comments preceded by /* to make it easy for you
to edit the contents with a file editor. When you start the ORG.EXE program
and press the F2 key, you can answer the 2 questions that will construct the
ORG.PRO file for you. You may want to look at the Appendix of the IBM BASIC
manual or other PC books to understand the ASCII values for special characters.
The default ORG.PRO assumes that you have a printer connected to printer port 1
(LPT1) with continuous feed (fan-fold) 8.5" by 11" paper using pica font
(10 characters per inch) and 6 lines per inch spacing, resulting in a page
dimension of 80 characters per line, 66 lines per page. If your printer does
not fit this description, then you should use a file editor and change the
contents of the ORG.PRO. E.g. if you want to squeeze more characters in a page
with compressed characters at 8 lines per inch to print 132 characters per line
and 88 lines per page on an IBM graphics printer connected to LPT2, then you
should have the following lines in the ORG.PRO.
88 /* Printer lines per page

132 /* Printer characters per line
LPT2 /* Printer port
15 27 48 /* Printer control characters

where ASCII 15 is the character to set compressed mode while ASCII 27 (Esc) and
ASCII 48 ("0") sets my printer to 8 lines per page. Since your printer may be
different from mine, please find the correct information in your printer manual
if you want to change the default ORG.PRO file contents.

If you intend to export the organization chart produced by this program to
other systems, e.g. the mainframe computer or special printers that use other
ASCII sequence for line and box drawings, then the definition in the ORG.PRO
file may not be appropriate. You can use any text editor to change the
contents of the ORG.PRO file to suit your needs. If you mess up the ORG.PRO,
you can always delete it and then let the F2 Setup option of the ORG program
to create a standard one for you again.

This program also supplies a sample biological organization chart called
LIVING.ORG and a subset called MAMMALS.ORG that has been processed into a
printable file called MAMMALS.ASC to give you some idea as to how everything in
this world can be organized in addition to business and political entities.

If you find this prorgram useful, for each copy that you install, a contribution
of $20 to the following address will be appreciated.

Jerming Lee
P.O. Box 102
Chappaqua, NY 10514-0102

----------------end-of-author's-documentation---------------

Software Library Information:

This disk copy provided as a service of

The Public (Software) Library

We are not the authors of this program, nor are we associated
with the author in any way other than as a distributor of the
program in accordance with the author's terms of distribution.

Please direct shareware payments and specific questions about
this program to the author of the program, whose name appears
elsewhere in this documentation. If you have trouble getting
in touch with the author, we will do whatever we can to help
you with your questions. All programs have been tested and do
run. To report problems, please use the form that is in the
file PROBLEM.DOC on many of our disks or in other written for-
mat with screen printouts, if possible. The P(s)L cannot de-
bug programs over the telephone.

Disks in the P(s)L are updated monthly, so if you did not get
this disk directly from the P(s)L, you should be aware that
the files in this set may no longer be the current versions.

For a copy of the latest monthly software library newsletter
and a list of the 1,400+ disks in the library, call or write

The Public (Software) Library
P.O.Box 35705 - F
Houston, TX 77235-5705
(713) 665-7017